Case study: Ria and Sieb Haagsma

Sharon Czapnick, her partner Andy and daughter Amy, 13, swapped their two-bedroom flat in Finchley with Ria and Sieb Haagsma from Amsterdam. They arranged the swap through an agency called Home Base and made the trip in October 2004 for four days.

"The house was just outside the centre of town, about a 10-minute tram ride away," says Sharon. "It was beautiful. You look at pictures on the site and hope it will be as good as it looks, but this place was even nicer than the photos, and had views of the river."

Sharon says house swapping isn't always easy to organise. "It can be a bit difficult to arrange. Sometimes people start off wanting to do it then change their minds, and trying to organise dates is hard, especially because we have to go during school holidays, which, of course vary from country to country.

"The only other bad thing really was that I worried unnecessarily beforehand. I got my mum to go and meet the couple - they had sent me a photo, so she knew what they looked like.

"She realised they were really nice so she didn't keep an eye on the place. We were in their fantastic home in Amsterdam, and we'd built up a friendship beforehand through emails, so I stopped worrying."

Sharon speaks enthusiastically about the experience.

"It all went really well. I was really, really nervous about swapping because it was the first time we'd done it. I was quite paranoid actually, thinking 'are they going to take care of my home, will they look after my cat?' She's 18 and adorable, so that was important to us."

In the end, Sharon needn't have worried. The couple they swapped with had specified on their profile that they had a cat and were offering petcare too, and the swap was cheaper than a holiday in a hotel.

"Holidays are expensive enough, I love hotels but they can be restricting and are stuck in tourist areas, maybe next to a disco or above a bar. We like going to places where real people live. if you've got someone's house you can please yourself, and you have your own fridge and so on."

· Sharon and her family swapped their house through Home Base Holidays. A triple room in a three-star hotel in Amsterdam would cost from £84.26 a night, a five-star room would be £190 a night. Self catering apartments start at around £500 a week.